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Saturday, July 23, 2011

Whimsical, Glittery Headband by Laura Drahozal

Have you every had a really bad haircut? I bet you have. This last one of mine was pretty awful. She gave me bangs that made me look like I was about twelve. You may wonder what this has to do with Art Glitter. Well, as I was trying to grow these bangs out, they kept falling in my eyes. I needed a headband, but no ordinary headband would do. 'That is when inspiration hit--I could make a cute, whimsical, glittery headband.

I decided that I wanted dimensional fabric flowers on my headband. I would have made them all cotton fabric, but realized that they would stand up better if I added some felt. I cut the flowers with an Accucut machine and then had the joy of decorating them.

I chose to use a brass stencil to make an interesting pattern on the fabric. I am currently on the Dreamweaver Design Team, so I opted to use their stencil LJ 855 Curliques. I taped the stencil onto cardboard on one side with removable tape, creating a "hinge". I then slipped the fabric under the stencil. I made a small puddle of Art Glitter Fabric Glue on my craft sheet. I had a little water handy, so that I could water it down a little if the glue got too dry.

I then loaded a small stencil brush (also by Dreamweaver) with the glue. I tapped the brush on a paper towel to remove the excess, then I brushed the glue over the stencil, scrubbing into the holes just a little. When I lifted the stencil, the beautiful pattern was on my fabric in glue. I poured colored glitter over it, and now my pattern was in glorious glitter. I repeated this for all of the flower parts and the stems that I had cut. I found that my stencil gunked up with glue every fourth or fifth time that I used it. Whenever this happened, I would just clean it with a little water and an old toothbrush.

I also discovered that when I stencilled the felt, I could use slightly wetter glue. Therefore, every time I would clean the stencil, I would use it with the felt the very next time. That way, any water that was not completely wiped off mixed with the glue. WARNING: this technique is super addictive--so much so that I actually created four different flowers, of which two became headbands--one blue and one pink.

After the parts dried, I stacked them. I stitched a small x in the center to attach all of the petals. Then, I ran a quick running stitch around the center of each felt layer and pulled it tight to get the petals to stand up. This created my 3D look. Then, I had to attach the flowers fo the headband. Sadly, the flowers would not attach to the headbands with my fabric glue. I had to sew them down with a few stitches.

When the leaves and flowers were in place, I put a little Art Insititute Fabric Glue on the edges of the cotton petals and added more glitter. I let this dry, then heat set it, following the instructions on the back of the glue bottle.

I had a great time creating this whimsical solution to a bad haircut. I thought I would hang onto these and wear them occasionally even after the hair was fixed, however, when I asked my grandmother to model these for this blog post's pictures, she loved them so much that I am planning on giving them to her. This got me to thinking about what a great project this would be at a senior center or for kids (with a little supervision during the sewing). It was fun, creative, functional, and glittery--my favorite type of project!

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